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Re: Defense Defense Defense

I'm an old school guy and yes I'll admit that building a team around an
offense would not be my first choice. Still, conventions are made to be broken
and this is one hell of an offense. I would also submit that the D more
than held up its bargain in the first half. I believe that the ultimate blame
here goes to the Colts O, which entered, and left, the game with a timid,
passive, conservative outlook. Thats not how you take the rock out of the
defending champs hands.

Re: Defense Defense Defense

and I'd like to repost what I typed too...

"TEAMS win championships, not just offense or defense alone. The Pats are the best team period. Some say that it's mostly their defense but all three areas of their team collectively play well together and complement each other. Look at the Steelers, how do you think they won 15 straight games with a rookie? The are a great team all around and their style complements each other. The Colts don't have that at all. That was one of my fears when Dungy was hired on and it was "Dungy will fix the defense, and Moore will run the offense". Basically we have 2 seperate teams with an unspectacular special teams unit. That's why I am beginning to think we need to clean house in coaching department. Dungy took us to another level, don't get me wrong, but he needs a place that he can call all the shots (and no he didn't have that in Tampa either). Peyton is Peyton, but the team is poorly structured for a deep run in the playoffs."

* Most Humorous Poster Nominee (2004, 2005, 2010)*Off Topic Post of the Year Winner (2009)*Off Topic Thread of the Year Nominee (2010)

Re: Defense Defense Defense

So, is it time to rethink this 'defense built for speed' and get some size in there? Is Dungy's system a bit outdated, or 'figured out'?

I wonder if some of the Colts' injuries on defense this year had to do with being undersized?

-Bball

IMO there's nothing wrong with the system, but we still don't have the personnel to run it adequately. So far Polian has not gotten the big play Sapp like DT, for some reason he thought Josh Williams was that and paid him accordingly . I think we'll be set with Doss and Sanders at safety but those guys might never play a whole season together because they are somewhat injury plagued. The corners are iffy but will look a whole lot better if we get better line play, the problem is that we don't have a clear cut #1 CB or people that can stay healthy. The LB might get better with time but I am unsure to this point about any of them. We just a couple of experienced players here and there and a coordinator that will mix it up a little more with the play calling.

* Most Humorous Poster Nominee (2004, 2005, 2010)*Off Topic Post of the Year Winner (2009)*Off Topic Thread of the Year Nominee (2010)

Re: Defense Defense Defense

The problem isn't the defense - or lack of it.

The problem is abandoning a game plan based on offense in favor of one based on defense when your defense isn't all that good.

There is no reason why the offense couldn't open things up yesterday. The weather wasn't bad, the field was solid - and even if the field wasn't solid, bad fields (as opposed to a howling wind) actually help offenses, not defenses. On a bad field defenses can't get a good pass rush and receivers know where they're going, the DB's don't.

Would I like to see a defense that didn't miss a ton of tackles? One that could stop a team on 3rd-and-11? Absolutely. But I'd rather see a team that approaches a game by giving their best game - not entering a game saying, in effect, "We don't think we're good enough to play our wide-open passing attack this game. We don't think we can throw the ball down the field today. Instead we'll run the ball and throw short passes to play ball-control even though our opponent is the best team in the league, except maybe Pittsburgh, at playing that type of game."

Re: Defense Defense Defense

But our Denfense didn't play that bad yesterday. You have to keep in mind several things.

We were playing a VERY good team. Holding the Pats to 20 points isn't as bad as St. Louis, or other teams.

The Defense was on the field for a VERY long time. If the offense could have done one less 3 and out, or the ball not been stripped, or... There were on the field for 37:43 of the 60 minutes. Colts Offense had the ball for 22:17, almost twice as long. And 2 of thoses drives we got "0" points.

Freeney got held on almost every play. I can't count the times that the announcers said the Patriots got away with holding.

I don't think the Pass Interference call would have been made if the crowd didn't start booing. I can't fault the croud, but the refs coud have called some the other way, again the announcers.

The defense is what kept up in the game in the first half. Kept them to FG's and not TD's!

So before we complain about the Defense keep all this in mind.

I would like to have 2 more players on D. A big guy to plug up the middle, and someone like Julius Peppers in the backfield.

Re: Defense Defense Defense

Guys
D just isn't enough. Our current defense held the super bowl champs to only 20 points. Even if we had already beefed up our defense and somehow held them to 10 points and given our offense more time of possession, there's no guarantee we would have won that game. If the best ever offense in football can't score a single touchdown in 22 minutes, how is spending money on D going to save us?

Re: Defense Defense Defense

The defense wasn't all that bad yesterday. They did their job, but the offense didn't follow through. I think we were simply outcoached. The Pats came in with a better gameplan. We never used our biggest weapon to throw downfield.

Re: Defense Defense Defense

The defense wasn't all that bad yesterday. They did their job, but the offense didn't follow through. I think we were simply outcoached. The Pats came in with a better gameplan. We never used our biggest weapon to throw downfield.

Peyton's the best at the 2 minute drill. We saw that at the end of the half. Then why didn't we pass more? We kept trying to establish the run, with James.

Even if we did pass more, the timing was just a little off between Peyton and the recievers. How many dropped balls did we have?

That's the inescapable conclusion after their latest pratfall, a 20-3 loss where they did virtually nothing to challenge a secondary held together by duct tape and baling wire.

If there were a game Indianapolis could steal, a game where they could change star quarterback Peyton Manning's winless record in Foxboro, this was it. New England was missing cornerback Ty Law. It was missing cornerback Tyrone Poole. It was missing defensive lineman Richard Seymour.

Yet the Colts lost, and it wasn't close.

Critics may want to charge Manning with the defeat, claiming he can't win big games, especially when the Patriots are involved. But Manning wasn't responsible for this collapse; a bizarre game plan he tried to implement was.

I'm not sure where to start, but I know what rankled me most: The Colts didn't provide the game's best quarterback with the ammunition to attack New England's weakness. That, of course, was a secondary so short of experience the Patriots were forced to sign two free agents last week.

Common sense called for the Colts to do whatever they could to keep emergency defensive back Troy Brown on the field, forcing him to cover Brandon Stokley in an obvious mismatch. Yet they opened with two tight ends, stayed with two tight ends and broke from tradition only when they went no-huddle late in the first half.

That's when Manning completed 12 of 14, and the Colts came this close to scoring a touchdown before settling for a field goal. But they exposed the Patriots' weakness, and they would attack it again and again in the second half.

Or so it seemed.

Yet Indianapolis returned to its two tight-end formation in the third quarter, ran Edgerrin James on two of its first three plays and settled into a deep sleep. They didn't attack. They didn't force Brown on to the field. They didn't even look at Marvin Harrison.

And they got what they deserved -- a thumping.

"We tried to get some things going," said coach Tony Dungy. "We didn't get our running game going as well as we would have liked. We just didn't convert our third downs."

Now, let's get something straight here: Tony Dungy is one of the game's sharpest and most successful coaches. But to talk about getting a running game going when the Patriots are trotting out a wide receiver to cover your third wide receiver makes no sense.

Re: Defense Defense Defense

Agree with Rimfire and the article.

It's one thing to change things up a bit to try to keep the other side off balance. I wasn't very surprised we came out and tried to run the ball. We've got a decent running attack. Catch them off balance after they've spent two weeks preparing to stop the pass. It seems to make sense, right?

Fine. Try it. But we didn't get that "grind it out" drive we wanted right off the bat. Then what? Two schools of though, I guess. One you can keep with the game plan, one you've devised and think will work. Or you can dump it and go back to what got you to the playoffs in the first place.

It takes a lot of displine to stick with the plan when things don't start out so good. It takes even more to dump that plan.

I'm rambling, I guess, but I'm not a big fan of *reacting* to the other teams strengths. Screw that. Make them react to you. Come into game with the mindset that we are going to do what we do every game and there's no way in heck they can stop us. You want to change it up? Fine. Open the offense up even more. Go for the big play often.

I guess I get an A+ for hindsight.

New England played a great game. Almost a text book example of how to win a playoff football game.